BIOGRAPHY

Magician, manipulator or creative genius?

In 2001 Richard Scott quit his very successful ‘day job’ as technical illustrator-turned-IT specialist to pursue his passion for art full-time. Born in Britain in 1968, but now residing in South Africa, he started drawing at an early age, always scribbling down ideas, but it was to take him almost 30 years to arrive at his vocation of fully fledged artist.

His work exhibits some characteristics that may be associated with the 1960's Pop Art movement, yet it defies simplistic categorisation, oscillating as it does between naively decorative and super contemporary. Scott’s vision is personal and reflective. Though his images sometimes appear simplistic, they form a complex and coherent whole. Using a variety of painting, sculpture, drawing and graphic media, he borrows images from the world of popular and consumer culture to convey his social, sexual and perceptual messages. Cars, planes, trees, nude women, and African animals combine to form Scott’s personal iconography. He constantly modifies and re-examines old imagery, but when viewed in terms of ideas rather than chronology, the stylistic cohesion of his work becomes apparent.

Above all though, Scott is always passionate about his art, his creative processes and his conceptualisation of ideas. Like numerous other Pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami, he values the creative process as highly as the finished product.

Richard Scott the artist, Richard Scott the marketer and Richard Scott the business man. Though Richard wears a number of caps, they always seem to point in one direction: simplicity.

Richard, through his work, is looking for a peaceful and quiet world, where the reality is only a dream of what it could become in an ephemeral and better life.

He has found a way of communicating his subjective view of the world in an honest and unique way, so as to make it completely accessible to almost everyone. With the simple lines, the texture of the paint on the canvas and the mood of the image secured in its simplicity, Richard teases the viewer with suggestions of a wonderful life.

It is the notion of warm, sunny days, the beach, the beauty of beautiful girls, animals, trees and uncluttered landscapes that cheers the observer. This is the untroubled, carefree life of a child. This is the idea that we love, and the idea that we wish to own.

This is art.